THE DONKEY BOY and BOBBIANNE PATCH
from Freakish 10-in-1 America - 2026
There was one season we worked Route 80 through Iowa pretty hard, Davenport to Des Moines, then a tad further into Nebraska. Out there, smaller towns had a couple of churches, a few bars, maybe a film theater, and little else. No air conditioning back then, so movie houses had swamp coolers that made the place stink like a pile of damp laundry. Small town Smell-O-Vision.
A simpler time, simpler people, simpler carny.
“Take a little, leave a little” was our byword. Make your nut, but if you gouge them, they’ll remember it forever - especially in the farmlands where slash-and-burn is part of the farm life but not their entertainment budget.
We’d have an advance man, a week or so ahead of us, to set up the key people. There’s a workaround angle for every tricky roll-in. Make the police happy, the mayor happy, and… and local pastors? More than happy. Have one of the sideshow body-people meet with them, ask for a blessing, pray a word with them, and, more often than not, the minister would want them to come speak to his congregation on the Sunday before our set-up date.
His church would become like part of our ten-in-one show, starting a week early; sort of a private one-in-one for the padre and his flock; give him his chance to work a freak-curious crowd.
Our best advance rep was Jess Heimendinger, a good egg known as The Donkey Boy. He was as honest as a child, true to his word, and beat me at poker every time. Looking at him, I could never tell what kind of hand he had. In that department, he had us all beat.
His body was normal as anyone, but he had a disfiguring childhood condition, an extreme form of it, where his head and teeth grew abnormally. There were milder types of the same deformity that only left a wine-stain birthmark on the forehead, like that Gorbachev guy, or caused glaucoma and even blindness. Jess had it bad, but in the big picture, he handled it, lived with it, and worked with it.
Occasionally, he’d have a seizure; more frequently, just a migraine. He could see alright, but just what was directly in front of him.
People only saw his deformed head and face.
If I were a medico, I’d know how to describe the condition better, so let me keep it simple. Jess had a very different bone structure, bigger here and different there, a flattened nose, protruding eyes, and big teeth that tilted outward past oversized lips. He had sort of a muzzle that made it hard for him to talk and pretty hard to understand.
The ears? Yeah, he had big ears. Bigger than any I’d ever seen and covered with the silky hair like that hanging from his cheeks and chin. He didn’t trim it, thinking that shorter would be less shocking, less likely to draw a big crowd. Strictly business. That was his take on it.
Believe me, no one ever overlooked him or lost him in a crowd.
I watched Jess do his church spiel a dozen times and damn if he wasn’t a better storyteller than I am or ever will be.
At a Sunday service, he’d stay out of sight in the back of the church while the preacher laid into his sermon: gospel quotes, homespun anecdotes, and a rouse-up ending. But that was just the wind-up before the pitch. The best of these sermons usually mentions some poor unfortunates who prayed for miracles, and, despite never getting one, never lost faith.
Once the sermon was over and the congregation was primed, the preacher would stand still for a long moment, stare at the back of the congregation, then wave, beckoning Jess out of the shadows and into the aisle toward him.
There was a moment before anyone noticed him. Then, as more people turned to see what the preacher was waving to, gasps and stifled screams swept through the church. As Jess got closer to the pulpit, the minister would calm them while motioning for Jess to join him.
Friends, there is no finer midway show than a church where everyone reacts to a disruption, be it a woman fainting, a heart attack, or someone passing gas.
I’m laughing at that, but they’re all wake-ups; all performance punctuations, and can be used as part of the bally.
For the most part, churchgoers are easily enthralled by things being askew. Holy-rollers hate freak shows, mainly because they’re competition to their own faith-healing sideshows. So Jess knew how to play them like a poker hand.
The preacher holds up his outstretched hands, urging his flock to settle down.
“Be not afraid! I know this man! I have spoken with him at length about his misfortune! He carries his life cross along his trail of tears… a path that has led him here to share his story, his burden, his faith with all of us. The Lord has known this man from the instant of his birth, and he has accepted Jesus as his lord, his Savior. Will you grant him the grace to bear his soul before you?”
I’d never heard a tighter, more effective bally in all my years. The congregation then fell silent, some quietly mouthing the words of prayers.
One by one, the believers found their voice and called out their agreement. A few brave souls said, “Yes!” “Let him speak!” “Praise God almighty!”
Jess had a very different kind of voice, made less understandable because his mouth and jaw didn’t work like yours or mine. His half-formed words were accompanied by breathy whistles and a halting delivery Jess played up when dealing with strangers, drawing crowds, or trying to get out of a jam.
He comically referred to his exaggerated speech as “Dahkee Tock.”
When he stepped up into the pulpit, he’d hold the preacher’s hand firmly, as though he were frightened, and start talking loud.
“Ahm Jesh Hymadigger! Dey caw me dahkee boy! I us bor ih nassville, dennesse!
Not so far from normal speech that people got completely lost, but strange enough so’s they’d sure pay attention. The more devout Christians clasped their hands and bowed their head in prayer while listening.
I heard his patter enough to know most of it.
“They call me the Donkey Boy, and I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. My mother was a wet nurse with the Baptist Women’s Missionary Union. Mama had a nervous breakdown. My poor mama. She gave me up to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society when I was two. She’s gone now, Lord help her.
“Living at the children's home was sad; I had no friends and was kept separate. Alone.”
At this point, Jess would ask the preacher if he could tell the people about his dream. Of course, it was a stage whisper, loud enough for the followers to hear, and they called out their approval.
“Testify, Brother!”
Jess used that whisper kinda’ like forcing a rube to pick a certain card from a fanned-out deck. As I said, he was a top-shelf talker and poker player. He knew when to breast his cards and when to play them. A moment of silence crept by until he knew he had them all in his hand.
I thought, Here it comes. People, hang on to your hats!
“They called me donkey boy and, when I grew up, I looked more and more like this. I don’t look at mirrors. Never look in mirrors! Never had a friend. Never knew love. No affection. I keep my tears to myself. Each day starts, and I remember I am unwanted. I am a freak.
In the pews, many were weeping and praying harder.
“But I found a way to have Jesus in my life. It came to me in a dream I had when life seemed worthless and I wanted to give up.
“The dream was in a far-away place, long ago, and there were strangers all around me. My shoulders hurt bad and someone was sitting on my back. I tried to get free of the weight by moving through the crowd. The people crowded around, then moved back so I could walk. I did not know where to go. My feet stepped on branches and cloth on the ground in front of me. I was lost and afraid. So afraid.
“Then, a voice from the crowd yells, ‘WHO IS THIS MAN?’”
Every time Jess got to this point, an electric shock ran through the parishioners. Some of them began to pray aloud, so Jess raised his voice.
“I heard another voice cry out, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Well, I hope to shout, the place went bonkers. But Jess still had a few more cards to play. He raised his arms, still clutching the minister’s hand, and looked upward. Everyone raised their hands.
"I will carry you, Jesus!" Jess cried out with a well-rehearsed catch in his voice.
Pandemonium. Weeping, howls of pain, shouts of exaltation, joy, rapture, the enchilada.
Then he looked to the pews, scanned the faces with his teary eyes wide open in amazement, and hit them with the KO punch; the hole card.
“JESUS LOOKED DOWN AND SMILED AT ME! HE LAID HIS HAND ON MY HEAD!”
What I saw at each of these gatherings was the very heart and soul of sideshow. Skip the two-bit tickets; this was the ten-dollar main attraction. It was spiritual, okay. Not religious, but mystic spiritual. He reached into these folks’ souls and touched their hearts.
I also saw my show’s angle: a guaranteed, best-ever, opening-day, gate box-office sell-out. Figure the entire congregation, all their relatives, a huge word-of-mouth crowd, all the parents, all the kids, grandmas, half the damn county. I kept thinking of a carny, Tent Revival horde.
We’d make our nut before nightfall, day one.
Jess would stick around for the first-day shows on the ten-in-one stage, then he be off to our next town to set up the same gambit again. A trooper.
Those who missed the church show, missed his opening day act, and anyone who wanted, more than anything, to see what they missed, were sure to come back next year.
Hell, they’d cut in line to lay their money down.
Over the years, we’ve had all sorts of bunk-ins here at the mobile park: some transient, some looking to set down roots, and others just looking for a handout. All the smart cookies stashed away enough of their cut to cover their old years, but even some of them might have something go wrong, get botched up with a shady investment, lose a bundle to a thief, or just fritter away their alfalfa on drink or drugs or lottery tickets.
Those of us who made it here are an odd lot indeed: Jimbo Kohler, of course, Kitman, The Mule Man, Jess Hiemendinger, The Idiot Savant, Madame Lana Avant, and BobbiAnne Patch, the Half-Man/Half-Woman feature act in my last ten-in-one.
The list goes on.
Most have gone on now, and the rest of us will be making the same exit, whenever. We’re all too old for the road anymore and, besides, there isn’t any road anymore. Holy Rollers shut most of it down years ago, but lately, sideshows have just become a social hot potato.
I’m amazed how publicity has overtaken spectacle as a national fascination. How much difference is there between a human oddity and a celebrity? A freak looks very different, and people are curious to see for themselves; the celebrity appears normal, and people want to know every detail of their life. Both are paid in proportion to how much curiosity they can arouse in folks. But since a freak is considered by some to be a “poor unfortunate,” they must be hidden away. To pay a dollar to look at them is considered uncaring and cruel. To pay ten dollars to see a celebrity in a film is considered an artistic endeavor, even if the film is degrading, cruel, or exploitative.
To my way of thinking, it’s the celebrity who has a freakish life. So, do-gooders closed the sideshows, made them illegal, hid the freaks, and felt good about themselves. But they took away the livelihood of people who had no other option. They made it illegal for the freaks to be self-sufficient and that, itself, is the crime.
They turned independent people into dependents and stored them in hospitals to wait out their years.
Sure, show folk were a lot different than your average working stiffs, and some pretty wild scenes went down, but all in all, they were just folks, being folks. Now, it’s the lifestyle bull.
We were an extraordinary family, and each of us brought something special to the party beyond show life memories.
And a few of them took a hell of a lot more away than they arrived with.
I got to know BobbiAnne Patch much better after she settled down here. Her life on the road wasn’t as hard as most; her act was mostly modeling half-dress, half-suit costumes and teasing the crowd with near nudity and suggestive choreography. Her hair was long and wavy on one side and short like a man’s on the other. Straight down the middle, night and day. She was a woman, but when she flashed her panties backstage, there was obviously something else going on. It was just a minor deformity, but it set people’s minds to wondering. She was what they called a pseudo – an “all-in-one” sex - but with some distinguishing aspects that would suggest otherwise.
She was born Anne Louise Brewster and took on the handle BobbiAnne to beef up her canvas on the bannerline and draw.
I met her in fifty-eight. She had just turned eighteen and decided small-town life in Livonia had become intolerable, what with small-town gossip and small-town money. We were set up in Lansing and it was a flat Summer with weak crowds. She showed up at Roland’s wagon just after daybreak in goofy get-up; a Gatsby flapper dress, a silk tuxedo tailcoat, fake collar, bowtie, and pink carnation boutonniere.
Roland knew the downbeat the minute she opened the door. He did a double-take, let out a stifled cackle, and held out his hand.
“How do, Miss…Ter?”
“It’s BobbiAnne. BobbiAnne Patch. And Miss or Mister is fine with me. You have room for an attraction?”
They shook, and Bobbie shot me a look to see if I was in on the okeydoke. I smiled and tipped my skimmer. Smiles all around.
She put her hands on her hips.
“Now that we have that out of the way, no, I don’t; no, I’m not; yes, I am, but that’s my row to hoe. I’ll leave all the other guesswork to you gents - and generous people who will itch to learn a bit more about a curious life. You have room for me, correct?”
Roland nodded, “Done deal. You’re in. Go hit the grab wagon and pack in some sunnysides; we’ll do a big handshake when I get the other acts on board. We’re a family, a grumpy family, but… reasonable enough.”
He turned to me.
“Good?”
I nodded and held out my hand to BobbiAnne.
“We show clean, okay?
“Pure as the driven snow, my good man, clean as a whistle.”
“Alagazam,” I said with a wink.
So BobbiAnne got the X; an exclusive slot in the show: no competition, no infringement, no hank-panky with her take. She got her own backend crew, travel cash, and full lot privileges, food, bunk, and protection.
Onstage, she was clearly half-and-half, turning to the girly side with a sexy pose, then flipping it to the he-side to wink and wave at the ladies in the crowd. She’d have her man side apply lipstick to her female lips, girl side stroke a fur wrist cuff and offer it to the guy side. She was a great mime with a seductive style that made some folks crazy; crazy mad, or crazy charmed to death.
Crazy pays.
Do-gooders wanted to shut her down, excited chumps wanted a close-up look-see. She rang all kinds of bells.
Roland had to keep a couple roughnecks out front to keep jazzed-up rubes off the stage. Those bohunks never blinked and didn’t care about sex. They were only interested in drinking twice a day, bathing once a week, and getting more tattoos every time they had a few bucks.
Muscledrunks.
BobbiAnne set loose wild notions inside both men and women. Doc Felding, the snake oil jointee, said it was “The anima and animus coming out, succumbing to long-buried urges and desires.” Doc started out as a legit shrink until he got his nose stuck in the snowbag. “The Freud Penchant,” he called it. Never had a cent. Wound up in the loony hatch, seeing rats in the clouds.
But the notion of animal reaction was spot on; that much is gospel. Stir a chump’s puddle, and who knows what’ll come floating up? Bobbi provided two shows for the price of one… one onstage, one put up by the wackos and freeloaders in the crowd.
She offered an after-show “blow-off’ inside her tent for those willing to pay an extra dollar to stand behind a rope line and watch her change costumes. Her muscleheads held the rope, and God help anyone trying to get past it.
It wasn’t nudey or cootchie, just a simple costume change. She’d strip down to her padded, single-cup bra and loose silk boxer shorts, then pull on lacy lingerie and jodhpurs. The boxers were baggy, and people imagined seeing what they wanted to see in the baggy folds. That was the point, nothing else needed.
The roughies earned their kick by handling the crowd. More than a few men and women went simple and tried to get a note to Bobbie, grab at her, or follow her out the rear flap of the tent to the backlot.
HEY, RUBE!
I always fixed the town we were headed to with passes or cash up front, depending on how the politicos and police ran their racket. Better to set up the gildersleeves before a towny drunk or a Punch and Judy commotion on the lot steals the crowds attention from the jointee games.
Hell, we got a business to run.
Bobby was forty-two years old when she got pregnant and stopped traveling with the show. Oh yeah, she’d do one-offs here and there every once in a while to pick up some pin money, but she was mom first and carnie second. Her kids were always running around the Park and getting into all kinds of trouble: spraying people with water guns, chasing the llamas onto the lot, setting Zomar the Magician’s doves free, kid stuff. The old-timers got their noses out of joint, but I loved it.
They called me Uncle Boz, which I liked. At that time in my life, I was missing having little ones around.
I never asked her about her act or any of that.
I was happy she made it to retirement without meeting the wrong people and winding up broke or dead.
(c) 2026
Martin Higgins
all rights reserved.
A simpler time, simpler people, simpler carny.
“Take a little, leave a little” was our byword. Make your nut, but if you gouge them, they’ll remember it forever - especially in the farmlands where slash-and-burn is part of the farm life but not their entertainment budget.
We’d have an advance man, a week or so ahead of us, to set up the key people. There’s a workaround angle for every tricky roll-in. Make the police happy, the mayor happy, and… and local pastors? More than happy. Have one of the sideshow body-people meet with them, ask for a blessing, pray a word with them, and, more often than not, the minister would want them to come speak to his congregation on the Sunday before our set-up date.
His church would become like part of our ten-in-one show, starting a week early; sort of a private one-in-one for the padre and his flock; give him his chance to work a freak-curious crowd.
Our best advance rep was Jess Heimendinger, a good egg known as The Donkey Boy. He was as honest as a child, true to his word, and beat me at poker every time. Looking at him, I could never tell what kind of hand he had. In that department, he had us all beat.
His body was normal as anyone, but he had a disfiguring childhood condition, an extreme form of it, where his head and teeth grew abnormally. There were milder types of the same deformity that only left a wine-stain birthmark on the forehead, like that Gorbachev guy, or caused glaucoma and even blindness. Jess had it bad, but in the big picture, he handled it, lived with it, and worked with it.
Occasionally, he’d have a seizure; more frequently, just a migraine. He could see alright, but just what was directly in front of him.
People only saw his deformed head and face.
If I were a medico, I’d know how to describe the condition better, so let me keep it simple. Jess had a very different bone structure, bigger here and different there, a flattened nose, protruding eyes, and big teeth that tilted outward past oversized lips. He had sort of a muzzle that made it hard for him to talk and pretty hard to understand.
The ears? Yeah, he had big ears. Bigger than any I’d ever seen and covered with the silky hair like that hanging from his cheeks and chin. He didn’t trim it, thinking that shorter would be less shocking, less likely to draw a big crowd. Strictly business. That was his take on it.
Believe me, no one ever overlooked him or lost him in a crowd.
I watched Jess do his church spiel a dozen times and damn if he wasn’t a better storyteller than I am or ever will be.
At a Sunday service, he’d stay out of sight in the back of the church while the preacher laid into his sermon: gospel quotes, homespun anecdotes, and a rouse-up ending. But that was just the wind-up before the pitch. The best of these sermons usually mentions some poor unfortunates who prayed for miracles, and, despite never getting one, never lost faith.
Once the sermon was over and the congregation was primed, the preacher would stand still for a long moment, stare at the back of the congregation, then wave, beckoning Jess out of the shadows and into the aisle toward him.
There was a moment before anyone noticed him. Then, as more people turned to see what the preacher was waving to, gasps and stifled screams swept through the church. As Jess got closer to the pulpit, the minister would calm them while motioning for Jess to join him.
Friends, there is no finer midway show than a church where everyone reacts to a disruption, be it a woman fainting, a heart attack, or someone passing gas.
I’m laughing at that, but they’re all wake-ups; all performance punctuations, and can be used as part of the bally.
For the most part, churchgoers are easily enthralled by things being askew. Holy-rollers hate freak shows, mainly because they’re competition to their own faith-healing sideshows. So Jess knew how to play them like a poker hand.
The preacher holds up his outstretched hands, urging his flock to settle down.
“Be not afraid! I know this man! I have spoken with him at length about his misfortune! He carries his life cross along his trail of tears… a path that has led him here to share his story, his burden, his faith with all of us. The Lord has known this man from the instant of his birth, and he has accepted Jesus as his lord, his Savior. Will you grant him the grace to bear his soul before you?”
I’d never heard a tighter, more effective bally in all my years. The congregation then fell silent, some quietly mouthing the words of prayers.
One by one, the believers found their voice and called out their agreement. A few brave souls said, “Yes!” “Let him speak!” “Praise God almighty!”
Jess had a very different kind of voice, made less understandable because his mouth and jaw didn’t work like yours or mine. His half-formed words were accompanied by breathy whistles and a halting delivery Jess played up when dealing with strangers, drawing crowds, or trying to get out of a jam.
He comically referred to his exaggerated speech as “Dahkee Tock.”
When he stepped up into the pulpit, he’d hold the preacher’s hand firmly, as though he were frightened, and start talking loud.
“Ahm Jesh Hymadigger! Dey caw me dahkee boy! I us bor ih nassville, dennesse!
Not so far from normal speech that people got completely lost, but strange enough so’s they’d sure pay attention. The more devout Christians clasped their hands and bowed their head in prayer while listening.
I heard his patter enough to know most of it.
“They call me the Donkey Boy, and I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. My mother was a wet nurse with the Baptist Women’s Missionary Union. Mama had a nervous breakdown. My poor mama. She gave me up to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society when I was two. She’s gone now, Lord help her.
“Living at the children's home was sad; I had no friends and was kept separate. Alone.”
At this point, Jess would ask the preacher if he could tell the people about his dream. Of course, it was a stage whisper, loud enough for the followers to hear, and they called out their approval.
“Testify, Brother!”
Jess used that whisper kinda’ like forcing a rube to pick a certain card from a fanned-out deck. As I said, he was a top-shelf talker and poker player. He knew when to breast his cards and when to play them. A moment of silence crept by until he knew he had them all in his hand.
I thought, Here it comes. People, hang on to your hats!
“They called me donkey boy and, when I grew up, I looked more and more like this. I don’t look at mirrors. Never look in mirrors! Never had a friend. Never knew love. No affection. I keep my tears to myself. Each day starts, and I remember I am unwanted. I am a freak.
In the pews, many were weeping and praying harder.
“But I found a way to have Jesus in my life. It came to me in a dream I had when life seemed worthless and I wanted to give up.
“The dream was in a far-away place, long ago, and there were strangers all around me. My shoulders hurt bad and someone was sitting on my back. I tried to get free of the weight by moving through the crowd. The people crowded around, then moved back so I could walk. I did not know where to go. My feet stepped on branches and cloth on the ground in front of me. I was lost and afraid. So afraid.
“Then, a voice from the crowd yells, ‘WHO IS THIS MAN?’”
Every time Jess got to this point, an electric shock ran through the parishioners. Some of them began to pray aloud, so Jess raised his voice.
“I heard another voice cry out, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Well, I hope to shout, the place went bonkers. But Jess still had a few more cards to play. He raised his arms, still clutching the minister’s hand, and looked upward. Everyone raised their hands.
"I will carry you, Jesus!" Jess cried out with a well-rehearsed catch in his voice.
Pandemonium. Weeping, howls of pain, shouts of exaltation, joy, rapture, the enchilada.
Then he looked to the pews, scanned the faces with his teary eyes wide open in amazement, and hit them with the KO punch; the hole card.
“JESUS LOOKED DOWN AND SMILED AT ME! HE LAID HIS HAND ON MY HEAD!”
What I saw at each of these gatherings was the very heart and soul of sideshow. Skip the two-bit tickets; this was the ten-dollar main attraction. It was spiritual, okay. Not religious, but mystic spiritual. He reached into these folks’ souls and touched their hearts.
I also saw my show’s angle: a guaranteed, best-ever, opening-day, gate box-office sell-out. Figure the entire congregation, all their relatives, a huge word-of-mouth crowd, all the parents, all the kids, grandmas, half the damn county. I kept thinking of a carny, Tent Revival horde.
We’d make our nut before nightfall, day one.
Jess would stick around for the first-day shows on the ten-in-one stage, then he be off to our next town to set up the same gambit again. A trooper.
Those who missed the church show, missed his opening day act, and anyone who wanted, more than anything, to see what they missed, were sure to come back next year.
Hell, they’d cut in line to lay their money down.
Over the years, we’ve had all sorts of bunk-ins here at the mobile park: some transient, some looking to set down roots, and others just looking for a handout. All the smart cookies stashed away enough of their cut to cover their old years, but even some of them might have something go wrong, get botched up with a shady investment, lose a bundle to a thief, or just fritter away their alfalfa on drink or drugs or lottery tickets.
Those of us who made it here are an odd lot indeed: Jimbo Kohler, of course, Kitman, The Mule Man, Jess Hiemendinger, The Idiot Savant, Madame Lana Avant, and BobbiAnne Patch, the Half-Man/Half-Woman feature act in my last ten-in-one.
The list goes on.
Most have gone on now, and the rest of us will be making the same exit, whenever. We’re all too old for the road anymore and, besides, there isn’t any road anymore. Holy Rollers shut most of it down years ago, but lately, sideshows have just become a social hot potato.
I’m amazed how publicity has overtaken spectacle as a national fascination. How much difference is there between a human oddity and a celebrity? A freak looks very different, and people are curious to see for themselves; the celebrity appears normal, and people want to know every detail of their life. Both are paid in proportion to how much curiosity they can arouse in folks. But since a freak is considered by some to be a “poor unfortunate,” they must be hidden away. To pay a dollar to look at them is considered uncaring and cruel. To pay ten dollars to see a celebrity in a film is considered an artistic endeavor, even if the film is degrading, cruel, or exploitative.
To my way of thinking, it’s the celebrity who has a freakish life. So, do-gooders closed the sideshows, made them illegal, hid the freaks, and felt good about themselves. But they took away the livelihood of people who had no other option. They made it illegal for the freaks to be self-sufficient and that, itself, is the crime.
They turned independent people into dependents and stored them in hospitals to wait out their years.
Sure, show folk were a lot different than your average working stiffs, and some pretty wild scenes went down, but all in all, they were just folks, being folks. Now, it’s the lifestyle bull.
We were an extraordinary family, and each of us brought something special to the party beyond show life memories.
And a few of them took a hell of a lot more away than they arrived with.
I got to know BobbiAnne Patch much better after she settled down here. Her life on the road wasn’t as hard as most; her act was mostly modeling half-dress, half-suit costumes and teasing the crowd with near nudity and suggestive choreography. Her hair was long and wavy on one side and short like a man’s on the other. Straight down the middle, night and day. She was a woman, but when she flashed her panties backstage, there was obviously something else going on. It was just a minor deformity, but it set people’s minds to wondering. She was what they called a pseudo – an “all-in-one” sex - but with some distinguishing aspects that would suggest otherwise.
She was born Anne Louise Brewster and took on the handle BobbiAnne to beef up her canvas on the bannerline and draw.
I met her in fifty-eight. She had just turned eighteen and decided small-town life in Livonia had become intolerable, what with small-town gossip and small-town money. We were set up in Lansing and it was a flat Summer with weak crowds. She showed up at Roland’s wagon just after daybreak in goofy get-up; a Gatsby flapper dress, a silk tuxedo tailcoat, fake collar, bowtie, and pink carnation boutonniere.
Roland knew the downbeat the minute she opened the door. He did a double-take, let out a stifled cackle, and held out his hand.
“How do, Miss…Ter?”
“It’s BobbiAnne. BobbiAnne Patch. And Miss or Mister is fine with me. You have room for an attraction?”
They shook, and Bobbie shot me a look to see if I was in on the okeydoke. I smiled and tipped my skimmer. Smiles all around.
She put her hands on her hips.
“Now that we have that out of the way, no, I don’t; no, I’m not; yes, I am, but that’s my row to hoe. I’ll leave all the other guesswork to you gents - and generous people who will itch to learn a bit more about a curious life. You have room for me, correct?”
Roland nodded, “Done deal. You’re in. Go hit the grab wagon and pack in some sunnysides; we’ll do a big handshake when I get the other acts on board. We’re a family, a grumpy family, but… reasonable enough.”
He turned to me.
“Good?”
I nodded and held out my hand to BobbiAnne.
“We show clean, okay?
“Pure as the driven snow, my good man, clean as a whistle.”
“Alagazam,” I said with a wink.
So BobbiAnne got the X; an exclusive slot in the show: no competition, no infringement, no hank-panky with her take. She got her own backend crew, travel cash, and full lot privileges, food, bunk, and protection.
Onstage, she was clearly half-and-half, turning to the girly side with a sexy pose, then flipping it to the he-side to wink and wave at the ladies in the crowd. She’d have her man side apply lipstick to her female lips, girl side stroke a fur wrist cuff and offer it to the guy side. She was a great mime with a seductive style that made some folks crazy; crazy mad, or crazy charmed to death.
Crazy pays.
Do-gooders wanted to shut her down, excited chumps wanted a close-up look-see. She rang all kinds of bells.
Roland had to keep a couple roughnecks out front to keep jazzed-up rubes off the stage. Those bohunks never blinked and didn’t care about sex. They were only interested in drinking twice a day, bathing once a week, and getting more tattoos every time they had a few bucks.
Muscledrunks.
BobbiAnne set loose wild notions inside both men and women. Doc Felding, the snake oil jointee, said it was “The anima and animus coming out, succumbing to long-buried urges and desires.” Doc started out as a legit shrink until he got his nose stuck in the snowbag. “The Freud Penchant,” he called it. Never had a cent. Wound up in the loony hatch, seeing rats in the clouds.
But the notion of animal reaction was spot on; that much is gospel. Stir a chump’s puddle, and who knows what’ll come floating up? Bobbi provided two shows for the price of one… one onstage, one put up by the wackos and freeloaders in the crowd.
She offered an after-show “blow-off’ inside her tent for those willing to pay an extra dollar to stand behind a rope line and watch her change costumes. Her muscleheads held the rope, and God help anyone trying to get past it.
It wasn’t nudey or cootchie, just a simple costume change. She’d strip down to her padded, single-cup bra and loose silk boxer shorts, then pull on lacy lingerie and jodhpurs. The boxers were baggy, and people imagined seeing what they wanted to see in the baggy folds. That was the point, nothing else needed.
The roughies earned their kick by handling the crowd. More than a few men and women went simple and tried to get a note to Bobbie, grab at her, or follow her out the rear flap of the tent to the backlot.
HEY, RUBE!
I always fixed the town we were headed to with passes or cash up front, depending on how the politicos and police ran their racket. Better to set up the gildersleeves before a towny drunk or a Punch and Judy commotion on the lot steals the crowds attention from the jointee games.
Hell, we got a business to run.
Bobby was forty-two years old when she got pregnant and stopped traveling with the show. Oh yeah, she’d do one-offs here and there every once in a while to pick up some pin money, but she was mom first and carnie second. Her kids were always running around the Park and getting into all kinds of trouble: spraying people with water guns, chasing the llamas onto the lot, setting Zomar the Magician’s doves free, kid stuff. The old-timers got their noses out of joint, but I loved it.
They called me Uncle Boz, which I liked. At that time in my life, I was missing having little ones around.
I never asked her about her act or any of that.
I was happy she made it to retirement without meeting the wrong people and winding up broke or dead.
(c) 2026
Martin Higgins
all rights reserved.